Europe & Central Asia

2006

Brkovic, editor-in-chief of the pro-government newspaper Crnogorski Knjizevni List (Montenegrin Literary Journal), was attacked by three masked men outside his home in the capital Podgorica. The attackers fatally shot the editor’s driver Srdjan Vojicic, according to the Writers in Prison Committee of International PEN.

New York, December 26, 2006—Four unidentified men severely beat Nijat Huseynov, a reporter for the Baku-based opposition daily Azadlyg, on Monday morning, according to local and international press reports.

Huseynov told the Turan news agency that he had received anonymous threatening phone calls recently. The callers made reference to Huseynov's work but did not cite a particular article, he told Turan. The journalist had recently covered alleged corruption among high-ranking government officials.

New York, December 7, 2006—The Azerbaijan Court of Appeals should reverse a ruling excluding defense witnesses in the appeal of Sakit Zakhidov and release the ailing journalist, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today .

The court ruled Monday not to hear witnesses for the defense or further investigate the case against Zakhidov, a prominent reporter and satirist for the Baku daily opposition newspaper Azadlyg. Judge Latif Nabiyev gave no reason for his ruling, according to CPJ sources. The appeal is due to be heard December 15, according to the independent Russian online newspaper Kavkazsky Uzel.

New York, December 7, 2006--The number of journalists jailed worldwide for their work increased for the second consecutive year, and one in three is now an Internet blogger, online editor, or Web-based reporter, according to an analysis by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

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An unidentified assailant knocked Kitashov unconscious in Moscow and robbed him of his notes for a story on an attempted corporate takeover in the southern Russian industrial city of Togliatti. The assailant took Kitashov’s briefcase containing a tape recorder and reporting materials but left a mobile phone, money and other valuables, according to local press reports.

New York, November 28, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by death threats against two colleagues of murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

The independent Moscow newspaper Novaya Gazeta said in a statement yesterday that two of its leading journalists received anonymous death threats on November 24.

Deputy Editor Sergei Sokolov told the independent radio station Ekho Moskvy that publicizing the threats was the best way to protect journalists. But the semiweekly, citing concerns about the safety of its journalists, did not name those threatened or comment further.

An investigating judge in The Hague ordered the detention of Mos and de Haas for not revealing the identity of sources for a story they wrote for the Amsterdam-based independent daily De Telegraaf. On January 21, Mos and de Haas published the first in a series of articles about alleged access of the local mafia to classified files of the Dutch intelligence service, De Telegraaf editor Schell Paradigs told CPJ.